The Conservative Intelligentsia And Palin

Via Andrew Sullivan:

Great article by Mark Lilla in the WSJ about the death of conservatism

"The Palin farce is already the stuff of legend. [but] John McCain's choice was not a fluke, or a senior moment, or an act of desperation. It was the result of a long campaign by influential conservative intellectuals to find a young, populist leader to whom they might hitch their wagons in the future. And not just any intellectuals. It was the editors of National Review and the Weekly Standard, magazines that present themselves as heirs to the sophisticated conservatism of William F. Buckley and the bookish seriousness of the New York neoconservatives. After the campaign for Sarah Palin, those intellectual traditions may now be pronounced officially dead."

Irving Kristol's bitter capitulation to populism a quarter century ago was the harbinger. It's all been downhill since:

"Their function within the conservative movement is no longer to educate and ennoble a populist political tendency, it is to defend that tendency against the supposedly monolithic and uniformly hostile educated classes. They mock the advice of Nobel Prize-winning economists and praise the financial acumen of plumbers and builders. They ridicule ambassadors and diplomats while promoting jingoistic journalists who have never lived abroad and speak no foreign languages. And with the rise of shock radio and television, they have found a large, popular audience that eagerly absorbs their contempt for intellectual elites. They hoped to shape that audience, but the truth is that their audience has now shaped them."

One reason I believe the reconstruction of conservatism will require a generation's work is that the rot has gone so deep among so many with so much patronage. If it weren't for the blogosphere allowing new thoughts and debate to bubble up from below, and outside the Kristol-Lowry-Steyn axis, I'd despair.

Source: Andrew Sullivan

The Right Will Pull A 180

Oliver Willis asks some great questions, stressing the hypocrisy of the Right.

"How long:
- Before conservatives express their concern for government surveillance?
- Before the right thinks there’s too much power in the executive?
- Before the right complains about use of military power?

It is coming."

Source: Oliver Willis

Alaska: Where Corruption Is King

Alaska has some explaining to do. Their election numbers are well below the numbers they had from 2004:

"...the McCain-Palin ticket garnering 136,348 votes. In 2004, President Bush got 190,889 votes"

How do you have increased registration and a local on the ticket and get fewer voters?

Wait, convicted felon Sen. Ted Stevens was re-elected. Research 2000 had reported in the days before the election that Democratic challenger Mark Begich, an Anchorage attorney, was leading the 84-year-old Stevens by 22 percentage points.

I smell some fraud.

Source: WaPo

The Bush Legacy Catch Phrase

You pick it, historic or all-time lows for: unemployment, retail sales, manufacturing, the stock market, service sector index.

This is what Bush has left for Obama:

Welcome to Washington, president-elect Obama. You'd better get used to hearing the phrase "at its worst level since ______ "

Yankees Are Due With Democrat In Charge

The New York Yankees are due to win the World Series as they have only won during Democratic Presidencies over the past five decades. 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000 were Clinton. 1977 and 1978 were Carter. 1961 and 1962 were JFK.

With Barack Obama good for 8 years, this will be the new era of Yankee baseball, as well.

Shepard Smith Teaches Bill O On Journalism

Shepard Smith on Bill O'Reilly talking about Joke The Plumber and his 'death to Israel" claims. Smith called out Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher, recounting:

SMITH: "And I think that some of this disinformation, some of the lies that show up on the Internet, are dangerous. And those of us who hold truth dear, it’s our job to set the record straight."

O'Reilly facetiously plays the naive Fox Is Pro-Republican?" card:

O’REILLY: "OK, but you work for the FOX News Channel, which is the most unfair channel and is always trying to get the Republicans elected. So you can’t be doing this stuff. You can’t be challenging Joe the plumber and Ralph Nader. […]"

Smith counters that college drop-out Sean Hannity has that job

SMITH: "That’s Sean Hannity’s job."

The Republican-on-Republican love is great after this defeat.

Source: ThinkProgress

Neiman Marxist

All that Joke the Plumber BS about spreading the wealth, seems Sarah Palin had a good grasp on spending other people's money when it came to unauthorized shopping. She even hooked up the First Dude with $40,000 in clothing. Can you spend $40,000 at a Chess King?

Now that the story has broke, the GOP is looking to get their money back.

"Sarah Palin left the national stage Wednesday, but the controversy over her role on the ticket flared as aides to John McCain disclosed new details about her expensive wardrobe purchases and revealed that a Republican Party lawyer would be dispatched to Alaska to inventory and retrieve the clothes still in her possession."

Now she'll have to go back to the Wasilla Wal-Mart she had built, maybe score some knock-off Uggs to compliment that $2500 Valentino jacket.

Conservative Meme: Hope McCain Dies So We Get Palin

So the news is finally covering how ridiculously uneducated Sarah "Wasilla Hillbilly" Palin is, the kind of person you see on Jay Leno's "Jay Walking" segments. Shockingly dumb.

Now we hear from the conservatives that, by voting for Grampy McCain, they were really hoping he would take a dirt nap early in his first term so they could get Palin as President. I shit you not. Spike his Viagra?

Conservative turd Glenn Beck on his show with Red State’s Erick Erickson:

BECK: "I mean, I have to tell you if I heard once, I heard 1,000 times from people, and I never said this, never said this on the air because you just don’t say these things, but I heard a million times from people, 'I’m going to vote for John McCain and, you know, I mean, he’s old. Maybe we get Sarah Palin in the first term.' You know what I mean?"

ERICKSON: "Exactly".

Conservatives hope the Grandpa guy dies so they can get the young hottie airhead. That's some real Country First logic. That's who is leading the conservative movement. Didn't Cheney set it up for the VP to run the show?

You can hear it on YouTube here, Source: YouTube

How Wrong Can You Be And Still Have A Job?

Continuing from my previous post about Republican commentators getting it 100% wrong and still having jobs, check this nugget:

"If [Hillary Clinton] gets a race against John Edwards and Barack Obama, she's going to be the nominee. Gore is the only threat to her ... Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I'll predict that right now,"

- Bill Kristol, the man behind Sarah Palin, December 17, 2006.

Source: Salon via Andrew Sullivan

Universal Reboot

The world hits "ctr+alt+del" and reboots for Obama. CNN has a report on the world's view of the US.

Obama Gets North Carolina

No surprise, Obama gets North Carolina making it 364 Electoral votes. Missouri is still undecided, but it's 12 votes are looking Red.

Obama's Mandate

The Right Wing, people like Robert Novak, fear using "mandate" to describe what Obama has done. Novak writes:

"[Obama] may have opened the door to enactment of the long-deferred liberal agenda, but he neither received a broad mandate from the public nor the needed large congressional majorities."

Steve Benen at The Washington Monthly, using facts, dismantles Novak's lame talking point:

"In 2004, George W. Bush won less than 51% of the popular vote, 53% of the available electoral votes, and enjoyed a vote margin of 3 million. In 2008, Barack Obama won 52.3% of the popular vote, 65% of the available electoral votes (67% after North Carolina is called for him), and enjoyed a vote margin of about 7.4 million. Novak insisted that Bush's totals "of course" constituted a "mandate," while Obama's do not.

Indeed, Media Matters had an item yesterday noting that after the 2004 race, when Bush won a second term with the smallest popular-vote margin since 1976 (excluding the 2000 election) and the lowest electoral vote count for an incumbent president's re-election since 1916, major media figures still rushed to award Bush a "mandate."

Obama not only cruised to a major victory, but his party saw major gains in the House, Senate, and state houses. If Obama doesn't have a "mandate" for his policy agenda, the word has no meaning."

Unlike Bush's faux mandate in 2004, Obama's mandate will actually have an effect and his policies will help change America.

Source: Steve Benen

Blue America

Here is a look at counties and how they voted in relation to 2004. Blue indicates increased Democratic voting, Red increased Republican voting.

There is a massive shift towards liberal politics, especially the youth vote. Bush has turned an entire young generation blue and Obama mobilized it.



Source: NYT

Right Wing Media: Buy A Clue

In sports, as a commentator, you have to be correct some of the time to keep your job. In politics you can be wrong, dangerously wrong, and keep your job.

All these bozos thought McCain was going to win, that Palin was a great VP choice and thought conservatism was doing just fine. Wake up.



Source: Oliver Willis

The McCain Belt

Cool map from NYT, shows the back-ass shitholes where McCain did better than Bush did in 2004:



Andrew Sullivan suggests, "Ah, yes, Appalachia and Arkansas. Obviously concerned about marginal tax rates for those earning over $250,000 a year, I suppose."

Source: Matthew Yglesias

Palin Farce Gaining Traction

Country first? Palin was clueless from Day One and they knew it. Didn't know Africa was a continent, thought it was a country? They hid this from the public for 2 months, bullshitting all of us. I'm sure a lot more will be coming out now.

Watch the video and think about how clueless McCain was to pick her in the first place. And, more importantly, how naive and unconcerned conservatives are to follow their unvetted muppet leaders.



UPDATE: Fox's Carl Cameron and Bill O discuss the Palin farce.

From The Pen Of: Tom Toles

For you strict Constructionists:

Where Were You?

Relive the moment when you heard Obama would be President. This is how I heard it on MSNBC. It's like porn for politics.

Ain't No Party Like An Obama Party

My neighborhood, the East Village in New York, has a street jam to celebrate Obama's historic landslide. The party was a spontaneous collection of everyone and pretty much shut down the streets. What a buzz!

Here's a short clip with Queen's "We Are The Champions" being cranked out someone's apartment window.

Jo[k]e The Low Brow Straw Man Plumber

Yglesias doesn't understand why McCain spent so much time with his "role model" Jo[k]e the Skinhead:

"...the people who identify with Joe are the Republican base. They can’t turn this thing around. And they’re certainly not the people you’re supposed to be talking to in October. It’d be as if Barack Obama were criss-crossing the country with a young, hip lesbian acting as his main surrogate to attack McCain’s health care plan."

Coates adds:

"I think it comes from drinking your own Kool-Aid. To these guys, America is still Joe the Plumber. This is why you hear them disqualifying whole swaths of the country with phrases like "the pro-America parts" or "real Virginia." They have mistaken their little retreat in the forest, for the forest itself. Is it not a good thing to live in a democracy? Every four years you get to show your leaders exactly who you are."

What does it say about our political dialogue that “Joe the Plumber” (a) isn’t named Joe, (b) isn’t a plumber, and (c) doesn’t make nearly as much as he said he does? And people still take him seriously?

Source: Andrew Sullivan

Obama Starts His Landslide

Barack starts his landslide.

"Sen. Barack Obama emerged victorious in the first contest of the 2008 presidential election, winning 15 of 21 votes in Dixville Notch, NH. The town “has opened its polls shortly after midnight each election day since 1960, drawing national media attention for being the first place in the country to make its presidential preferences known.”

Obama is the first Democrat to win the village since 1968."

Source: CNN

Casting My Vote For Obama

The day is finally here. Let's make history.

I'll be in Connecticut voting for Barack Obama today. Could my smile be bigger?

Posts will be minimal.

The New Poll Tax

The new Poll Tax: the time it takes to vote.

Why does it take 3-4 hours to vote in 2008? Why does it happen in poor neighborhoods? Rachel Maddow addresses the perennial problem.



via Ezra Klein:

"The poll tax was a sly system of disenfranchisement used in the Jim Crow era to disenfranchise Southern blacks. Aware that the Constitution now assured everyone the "right" to vote, Southern states imposed a voting fee heavy enough that African-Americans would deem it a right too pricey to exercise. The 1964 Civil Rights Act, of course, did away will all that. But as Rachel Maddow says in the clip above, voting lines are just another form of poll tax. They are a time tax. How much is four hours worth to the average voter? How many voters can take four hours off from their job, or their family, to stand at a precinct? We tend to frame long voting lines as an inspiring vision of democracy, but they're quite the opposite: They are disenfranchisement in action. A longer line does not simply mean more people are voting. It means more people are not voting, as they could not afford the time tax."

NOTE: Actually, the 24th Amendment, passed by Congress in 1962 and ratified as of January 23, 1964, abolished "any poll tax or other tax" that denied or abridged the right to vote. It was not enough.

It took the Voting Rights Act of 1965 to actually get African-Americans registered and into polling places throughout the South.

By the way, Lyndon Johnson, Democrat from Texas, should be credited with the greatest act of political courage in modern American history for his leadership on the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of '65. A large majority of his fellow white Southerners turned against him and his party, but (pressured by King and the Civil Rights Movement) he saved America's soul.

It's now time for another Democrat. OBAMA!

The Hartford Courant: We Endorse Obama For President

From my home state of Connecticut, The Hartford Courant made Barack Obama only the second Democratic presidential candidate it has endorsed in the paper's 244-year history.

Calling Obama "inspiring," "unifying" and saying "he would make the nation proud," the Courant gave Obama its full endorsement over John McCain.

"Mr. Obama has the right qualities of leadership, the elevating, can-do message that 'we are the ones we have been waiting for' and the calm temperament for these anxious times," said the Courant editorial board. "He has the counsel of such trusted figures as former Republican Secretary of State Colin Powell and investment legend Warren Buffett."

More from The Courant's editorial, published on Sunday:

"Even if he doesn't become president, the huge crowds he has drawn; the record-breaking donations he has raised from an unprecedented number of contributors; and the nomination he won — all have rewarded the late Martin Luther King Jr.'s faith that one day his children would "live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character."

The times cry out for a leader of Mr. Obama's mettle. Americans have suffered through years of losses, from the nearly 3,000 people who died on Sept. 11, 2001, through the more than 4,000 American troops killed in Iraq and Afghanistan and the tens of thousands wounded. More than a million people have lost their homes through foreclosure. Economists are warning that the United States is facing the gravest economic threat since the Great Depression.

Republican Sen. John McCain has failed to persuade us he could wake the nation from this seven-year nightmare."

Source: The Hartford Courant

GOP Goes Rogue With Campaign Signs

The GOP is goin' rogue on Grandpa, pushing McLame under the bus. Truth hurts.

Bruce and Barack: "The Rising" in Cleveland

The Boss sings "The Rising" for Obama in Cleveland. "We are at the crossroads."

Final Presidential Estimate: Obama 55%, McCain 44%

GALLUP is at +13% for Barack Obama. On the day before the election it's 53-40.

Final Presidential Estimate: Obama 55%, McCain 44%

Source: GALLUP

McCain Avoids His Own Audience

What do you do when your base is as out of touch with reality as you? Avoid them.

"The disappearance of the town hall format from McCain’s campaign is striking, political observers said, offering a vivid example of how a signature strength became a potential liability and was abandoned."

McCain has not taken a question from his audience since Oct 10. He has since used uber-idiot "Joe the Plumber" as a symbol for all his base.

Who could forget this winner.



Source: Politico

Obama Shows Bigger Lead in Polls That Include Cell Phones

Obama's lead widens with cell phones users included in polls.

via Wired:

"Political polls that include cell phone users show Obama leading McCain by an average of 10 points, versus just over five points in land-line-only surveys, notes a Sunday survey put together by Nate Silver, founder of the electoral projections site FiveThirtyEight.

The survey shows a snapshot of 15 polls conducted on behalf of media companies and by polling companies such as Gallup and Zogby. Six of those, including one released late Sunday by NBC and the Wall Street Journal, include cell phone users. The rest don't."

Source: Wired

The Losers: Bush And McCain

Dumb and dumber, minus the plumber.

Andrew Sullivan: Barack Obama For President

Go to Andrew Sullivan's blog and read his thorough endorsement of Obama.

"Can we start that healing, that rebirth, tomorrow?

Yes. We. Can."

Source: Andrew Sullivan

Sacha Baron Cohen's "Bruno" Crashes Prop 8 Rally

Looking for video of this. Bruno was out in Los Angeles.

"Sacha Baron Cohen went undercover as his alter ego Bruno on Sunday by crashing a rally in support of a ballot measure that would ban gay marriage in California.

When photographers and reporters realized who he was and tried to approach the star, members of his film crew tried to shield him, and he was eventually whisked away in a van."

Source: HuffPo

CBS Poll: Obama Maintains 13 Point Lead

Reality Check:

"With two days left until the presidential election, Barack Obama continues to lead John McCain by 13 points among likely voters, 54 percent to 41 percent, a new CBS News poll finds."

Source: CBS News

Paul Krugman: The Republican Death Spiral

NYT's Paul Krugman on what the Republican Party might be after tomorrow's massive defeat.

"You might think, perhaps hope, that Republicans will engage in some soul-searching, that they’ll ask themselves whether and how they lost touch with the national mainstream. But my prediction is that this won’t happen any time soon.

Instead, the Republican rump, the party that’s left after the election, will be the party that attends Sarah Palin’s rallies, where crowds chant “Vote McCain, not Hussein!” It will be the party of Saxby Chambliss, the senator from Georgia, who, observing large-scale early voting by African-Americans, warns his supporters that “the other folks are voting.” It will be the party that harbors menacing fantasies about Barack Obama’s Marxist — or was that Islamic? — roots."

Republican moderates may not have a home anymore under the GOP little tent. The result, Krugman noted, is the acceleration of the Republican Party's "long transformation into the party of the unreasonable right, a haven for racists and reactionaries."

And how do we know? The full blown denial is there. A recent Democracy Corps poll found that Republicans, by a margin of more than two to one, believe that Mr. McCain is losing “because the mainstream media is biased” rather than “because Americans are tired of George Bush.”

8 years of Bush has been rough on all of us, hopefully this is the end of the Red State Blue State "divide and conquer" politics. Optimism is mine, I think once you remove the distracting divisive disease of Bush, the country will grow healthy again.

At first it will be hard for the Bushies:

"This will pose a dilemma for moderate conservatives. Many of them spent the Bush years in denial, closing their eyes to the administration’s dishonesty and contempt for the rule of law. Some of them have tried to maintain that denial through this year’s election season, even as the McCain-Palin campaign’s tactics have grown ever uglier. But one of these days they’re going to have to realize that the G.O.P. has become the party of intolerance."

We are moving forward, no more looking back in the rearview mirror on culture wars. Obama has changed that forever.

Source: Paul Krugman

McCain: Complains About Progressive Tax, But Is Not In Favor Of Flat Tax

For all the hot air John "FAIL" McCain and Sarah "$1200 Oil Checks For All Alaskans" Palin throw out about the empty argument that is "spreading the wealth", it should be noted:

"I think we could have an election that involves a major debate about the progressive income tax, but in order to have it, we'd have to have a candidate who is actually opposed to progressive taxation. The alternative to progressive taxation is a flat tax, and John McCain is not a flat tax supporter.

John McCain, as much as he may want to limit the slope of the tax line, isn't in favor of a flat tax; it's not in his policy proposals at all. Could you have a simple "let's have a more regressive tax scheme than we currently do" argument? Sure. But that can't be this scorched-earth, progressive taxation equals socialism argument the McCain campaign is making. It just doesn't make sense to have this extremist argument when the candidate making it isn't on one of the extremes."

We've had the progressive income tax since Teddy Roosevelt, a Republican and John McCain's hero.

What is worse: McCain making this bogus socialist argument or his Republican base actually believing it?

Source: L'hote Blog

GALLUP: Obama's Trend Dominates

The most recent national numbers from Gallup: Barack Obama, President of the United States.